The negatives

The largest complaints about College Board are its monopoly on the testing industry and its label as a “nonprofit”. Although the College Board seems more like a business due to its profit of around $150 million, it is considered a nonprofit. In extremely simple terms, a nonprofit means that none of the profit made should benefit one person. This obviously contradicts the $872,061 salary of the president or the $355,271 average salary of College Board’s 23 executives.

The profit doesn’t go back to students at all, and it does not make any fees lower. Some fees even prey on people who fear the test, like the $17 “see answer” cost and the $20 to send colleges the test.

Since College Board is a monopoly, it has no incentive to lower its prices. The absurd prices for sending scores to colleges (despite it being digital and extremely easy to send) make no sense.

The high costs of the tests make it hard for underprivileged kids to sign up, especially because the costs of taking several AP and SAT tests reach into the hundreds of dollars—funds that have to be paid off at once, which can present a financial burden to families of students who might not have several hundred dollars to spend at a given time. The kids who can afford tutors and books for the specific test do better than those who can’t afford private tutors. Adding the price of gas and hotels needed to reach tests that cannot be driven to comfortably in the morning, the price is excessively high. There is also a lot of poor communication with College Board canceling tests last minute without warning and losing tests with no way to make up for lost credit.

The lucky kids who have access to the money and the means to get to the test, as well as tutors and practice books, obviously do better on the SAT. SAT scores have become a measure of opportunities, not intelligence.